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Woman Bites Off Baby-Sitter's Lip

A 31-year-old Florida woman, Megan Marie Jones, allegedly came home drunk at about midnight on July 31 and got into a fight with her child's baby-sitter.

In the course of the fight, Jones bit off part of the baby-sitter’s lip, reports WVTV.

According to police who were called to the home in Crystal River, Florida, Jones began yelling at her 2-year-old son upon arriving home. When the baby-sitter objected, a brawl ensued.

While holding her baby, Jones attacked the 55-year-old sitter, allegedly hitting her and biting off a 1/4-inch piece of her lower lip. The woman, whose identity has not been revealed, was taken to the hospital for treatment.

A witness, also unidentified, captured the incident on video, which was turned over to the authorities. Jones was arrested on charges of child neglect and felony battery, and is being held in the Citrus County Jail without bail. Her parents have temporary custody of the baby, reports Tampa Dispatch.

Although baby-sitting has its dangers, it also has its rewards. It is one of the few jobs that has seen an increase in wages in recent years, with rates soaring across the nation, the Boston Globe reports.

Teenage sitters in Boston, for example, can get about $10 an hour, a rate that has risen about nine times faster than inflation since the early 1980s, the U.S. Labor Department notes.

The national average baby-sitting wage is about $12 an hour, which is more than what the average health care worker or retail clerk makes. As Erica Groshen, commissioner of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, put it: “You’d be hard pressed to find [another] profession where you see any wage growth.”

On the website UrbanSitter.com, a 25-year old graduate student studying archival management is listed at $13 an hour, a senior at Harvard at $12 an hour, and a Spanish-speaking Boston University graduate goes for $15 an hour.

A spokesperson for Mother’s Helper, an employment agency for adult baby sitters, says more college graduates are taking baby-sitting work because it pays more than some entry-level jobs.